Balmain / Pre-Fall 2012

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Doing the rounds at the pre-fall collections, one hardly expected to be stopped in one’s tracks by something that looked as if it could be within a hair’s-breadth of haute couture. Yet that was the jolting surprise at the Balmain showroom, where the tables were packed with buyers making orders and Olivier Rousteing was talking about a long-line, collarless blazer in dark-green velvet he’d had embroidered in an ornate quilted tracery of pearls, inset with lines of tiny jewellike stones, “like a Fabergé egg,” he explained. The jacket weighed several pounds, but that didn’t put off Emmanuelle Alt, editor in chief of French Vogue. She wore it over a white T-shirt to the dinner she cohosted with Donatella Versace during the couture shows. And she took Rousteing along to sit at her table.

Which means the former backroom boy is on his way and, judging from the level of work in some of this pre-fall collection, deservedly so. The Fabergé jacket (only one of several versions), as well as a stunning pair of draped, wide-legged trousers in the same embroidery are from a collection partly inspired by Russian Tsarist art, palaces, and militaria. Accessory tables were laden with huge gilt cuffs emblazoned with imperial eagles and belts with chunky gold buckles, ready to be styled with short Spencer jackets and tight, tiny dresses.

Still, as if pulling off the overt embellishment weren’t impressive enough, Rousteing was even cleverer not to lose himself in it. “I want an easier attitude,” he said, “so there is this feeling of pajamas and dressing gowns, too.” That means the fluid, silk, wide-leg pants and matching jackets, which feel new in a house formerly associated with skin-tight body-con dressing. His antennae for the coming of a new, oversize silhouette are finely tuned too: big, chunky biker jackets and vests came slung over the skinny dresses and sprayed-on jeans of “Balmania,” a phrase whipped up by his former boss, Christophe Decarnin. In short, this is a collection that will keep Balmain’s existing customers happy and begin to convert skeptics to the idea that something of valid fashion interest and quality is happening here.